The New Republic

The New Republic

The New Republic

All The Way: Proof That You Can’t Escape the Past

The new HBO film examines Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency, and shows that history is our best guide to the present.

HBO

The modern fight
for civil rights in America began in the mid-twentieth century, with the rise of
civil disobedience—the Montgomery Bus Boycott, for example, and the sit-ins
throughout the South—and eventually earned concessions from the federal
government. (“Concessions,” meaning “legally enshrined protections for
minorities.”) President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law perhaps the most
important bill from that period, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with the country
still reeling from President Kennedy’s assassination.

Decades later, in
2012, the Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan told Johnson’s
story in his play All The Way and earned a Tony for the effort. The screen
adaptation—also by Schenkkan—premieres Saturday on HBO, operating in the same
vein as recent cable television political retrospectives like Confirmation and The People vs. OJ Simpson. Like the play, the film offers a close
look at LBJ’s political legacy, from Kennedy’s assassination and the fight for
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Johnson’s second-term election. The film
feels necessary in this political moment, particularly in terms of depicting
the historical relationship between movements and the state. With Black Lives
Matter firmly established as the continuation of the 1960s civil rights movement
and an election on the horizon, Schenkkan’s timing couldn’t be better.

All The Way screened
recently at Lincoln Center, with the cast, director, writer, and a number of
HBO executives present. It had the feel of a mock political rally, with red,
white, and blue balloons strewn across the venue; in the lounge, there was a
cocktail reception, and political stickers and buttons printed with the movie’s
branding were omnipresent. The theme was a relief—because a make-believe election
is far preferable to the real thing, at least this year.

All The Way
begins with Johnson’s baptism by blood: The back seat of the presidential
limousine where Kennedy was assassinated flashes on screen, while Cranston’s
voice over, pitch-perfect in its languid, baritone Texan drawl, recalls a dream
he has of his mother’s home being raided by a Comanche war party. “It’s only a
matter of time before they haul me up into the light where their knives gleam,”
he says. You have to understand Johnson’s political calculus in the context of
the Texan settlers he’s descended from: It comes from fear, mixed with equal
measures of ambition and entitlement. That makes sense when you consider that
Johnson is the man who engineered America’s liberal democracy, as we know it,
at the height of racist obstructionism. Like his predecessor Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Johnson reconfigured the modern political landscape: Under his
tenure, the South parted ways with the Democratic party, and a new generation
of public institutions was ushered in under Johnson’s Great Society
program.

Writer Robert
Schenkkan—who’s authored two plays on Johnson, in addition to this latest
film—adapted the material in part because he believes the high-stakes political
melodrama is resonant today. Indeed, the lines of power so dutifully mapped
throughout the film are a reminder that there is historical precedent for
today’s seemingly incoherent political spectacle; hindsight brings things into
focus. (Trump certainly recalls Goldwater.) “We live in the world Lyndon
Johnson created,” Schenkkan said. “I think in some ways 1964—this movie—is an
origin story for 2016. All of the issues that we fight about covertly and
overtly have their genesis in that time.”

The film is
largely driven by Cranston’s forceful performance as Johnson, whom he’s played on Broadway. (Cranston’s onstage turn as Schenkkan’s LBJ won him a Tony for Best Actor in 2014.) Jay Roach, All The Way’s director, was so enamored
with Cranston’s performance that he signed up to direct two films with Cranston
as lead—All The Way and Trumbo, both of which examine
disquieting moments in American politics. “I had seen the play just to see what
he was capable of,” Roach said. “We hadn’t even started on Trumbo and I already committed to two films with him.”

For his part,
Cranston the actor is completely subsumed by President Johnson. Heavy makeup
and prosthetics complete his transformation into the thirty-sixth president. “As they
start to put on the ears, cheeks, chin, it all starts to come out,” he said.
“The more I see the character, the more it helps me to embody him and slip into
those shoes again. Pretty soon you can get an accent going.” Cranston slips
into a Texan drawl: “How’re you darlin’?” he asks me, tipping an imaginary hat.
He and Roach spent months on LBJ’s Texas ranch preparing for the role; Cranston
is a method actor. “The most challenging part was completely embracing the role
and not doing an impersonation,” he said. “To get the sensibilities of the man
that LBJ was and present him as honestly as I could.” And who is the man
portrayed in the film? A Texan, like the men telling his story, and a
looming, imposing figure at six-foot-four. Cranston’s LBJ is by turns hilarious and enraged. He’s
sarcastic, folksy, and good with dogs when the cameras are on him; behind
closed doors, he screams threats into his phone.

There are many
moments when President Johnson is deliberately cruel, such as when he turns
press away from Fannie Lou Hamer’s famous speech at the
1964 Democratic convention—where
Hamer testifiedabout her
brutalization at the hands of Mississippi police officers for attempting to
register to vote. (Watch for an electric performance from Aisha Hinds.) Or when
he humiliates and belittles his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. Melissa Leo plays her
stirringly, though she’s not given enough screen time. There is a particularly
cruel story arc when a top aide, Walter Jenkins, is compromised politically.
Johnson disposes of him, though he’d previously referred to Jenkins as a
surrogate son. It’s a microcosm for his strategy towards the South: Eventually
Johnson disposes of the entire Dixiecrat contingent in Congress.

The film
builds to that confrontation, and it is thrilling to watch Cranston, as Johnson,
shed the racists in his political coalition. It’s clear that this comes at
great personal cost to him—Johnson’s relationship with longtime political
mentor and Dixiecrat Richard Russell Jr. is irreparably damaged—but the viewer
isn’t particularly inspired to care. Progress is always more violent for those
with less privilege.

Martin Luther King
Jr., played by Anthony Mackie, opposes Johnson, even though the two men have a
lot in common. Like Johnson, King is powerful, ambitious, and sometimes unkind
to the women around him. (Hilary Ward is wonderful as Coretta King, but has too
few speaking lines.) King is also manipulative in his public and private lives.
Mackie, who stars in Captain America:
Civil War, is a magnetic newcomer. “When I read the script, it was the
first time I’d seen Dr. King portrayed as a man,” he said. “My dad always said
that Dr. King was a leader of men. And the more I read about him, the more I
learned that he was a radical.” Mackie’s portrayal of King is equally steely
and assured.

All The Way employs
nostalgia to find the truth behind huge political events, which puts it in
direct conversation with Selma and other
films about our recent political past. It is a great deal of responsibility.
While more of President Johnson’s legacy and personal history is made legible
on screen than I’ve ever seen before, the story leaves something to be desired.
The way the film relates to the characters relegated to its periphery is
disappointing—perhaps because even with the benefit of hindsight, the history
itself (and the people who made it) come up lacking.The plot is familiar, and though Cranston carries the film, the
most compelling subplots are cut short. The political intrigue of the ’60s
doesn’t feel new.

At
one of emotional low points of All The
Way, Johnson, recumbent in bed, recalls his father, Samuel E. Johnson Jr.,
musing that failure may have been what killed him. You can hear the fear and
paranoia gripping his voice—he sounds like a child afraid of the dark as he
begins to consider his own legacy.Johnson
had the same insecurities we all do; but whatever happened, he made sure it
happened on his terms. All The Way never
lets you forget that legacies, like most things, are mediated by power.